Construction of lithuania's identity: foreign policy analysis of interrelations between europe-lithuania-russia

Bachelor thesis „Construction of Lithuania's Identity: Foreign Policy Analysis of Interrelations between Europe-Lithuania-Russia“ seeks to analyse how relevant Others are incorporated in Lithuania‘s identity. Also, thesis aim to provide an answer what is the overall image of Lithuania’s identity today. Lithuania‘s identity has few main narratives that are constantly repeated and cultivated. One of them is that Lithuania and Russia are at loggerheads from the begging of times. On the opposite side European Union is a friend and a partner in any matter. After Ukrainian crises stroke academic society noticed a change in both perception of threats, security practise and making of partnerships. However, just few researches reckoned how these narratives intertwined with each other and settled in the minds and voices of state officials responsible for formation of Lithuania’s foreign policy. Not one of them tried to paint a bigger picture combining all of the opinions of relevant officials into one set of ideas. In order to do that conceptual lenses of constructivist international relations theory was implemented in this thesis. Considering that constructivists recognise the importance of ideas in decision making process the theory was selected in hopes to deconstruct the process of how particular narratives are incorporated in the identity. Moreover, constructivists recognise that the main players responsible for securitization act and solving the problems become the subjects of analysis. As the intersubjective creation of meanings is made through discourse practises constructivists believe it to be an important instrument of analysis when finding out in what ways certain images are articulated to the public. The concept of fear as an emotion is taken upon in this thesis. Identity openness and closedness is negatively proportional to the perception of the source of fear. For example, if the fear derives from uncertain geopolitical situation (outside factors) the identity will be open and including Others to Self. And if the source of fear derives from inner state belief system the identity will be closed. This concept suggests that when faced with fear state (according to how it perceives the source of threat) choose how to interact with outside world. On a similar note fear is what makes the states outline the threats. Threat according to different international relations schools can be a cause of asymmetry of power, asymmetry of identity or inner belief system. Every understanding has a different level of fixing the threat. Realists see the threat as a consequence of asymmetry of power which makes it relatively fixed as it can be outweighed by the cooperation with others. For liberals threat occurs when the Other acts against the usual and normal values. Liberals see threat as temporary and try to solve it by hegemonizing different perceptions and including as much Others to Self as possible. For constructivists threat arises from intersubjective interpretations of the situation that is why the threat becomes fixed and Others cannot be included to the identity. These variables were checked while analysing the discourse of President D. Grybauskaitė, official documents of Ministry of Foreign Affairs and speeches of Minister of Foreign Affairs L. Linkevičius also official documents of relevant Seimas’ committees and statements of members of Parliament. Information was selected from 2017 to 2019 in order to deduct regular practise of discourses. The research was made by using political rhetoric analysis which focuses on searching for semantic repetitions in relevant discourses. Analysis revealed that positions of State’s officials vary. On the other hand, combined to one single model they convey moderate stands of the identity being close to the middle of both fixing the threat and openness of the identity